Movies
Only a few days ago I was thinking: isn’t it amazing that everyone must acknowledge their own death as it’s happening; an incredibly courageous thing to do, even when done in cowardice, which means no mortal escapes at least one heroic deed—the experience of death alone makes everyone’s life extraordinary.
This brings us to Michel Gondry’s latest film. Since reading reviews before watching a movie is a ridiculous idea, I went to Village East Cinema thinking The Thorn in the Heart was about Michel Gondry’s idiosyncratic family, and that the woman in the poster/trailer was his mom; maybe The Gondry’s were a real-life French version of a Wes Anderson family, with a subtler, darker sense of humor. It turns out the primary characters of the documentary are Michel’s 80-something aunt, Suzette, and her middle-aged son, Jean-Yves. Both of them are wonderful characters, but I found the troubled Jean-Yves (who built elaborate sets for his model trains and made Super 8 movies as a child) to be a subject worthy of further investigation; yet the film is less about anything singularly remarkable than it is about the fact of having lived.
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Charlotte Gainsburg stars in Lars von Trier's Antichrist with Willem Dafoe
A lot of people are choosing to be hostile towards Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist“, especially the ones who’ve made it a point that they have no intention of watching it. Don’t listen to them. If you care an ounce about film-making or the art of storytelling, go see it as soon as you can. The first part of the movie alone, The Prologue, accompanied by this heart-wrenching song, is worth the $12.50 I paid. The monotone sequence is gorgeous, and it perfectly crystallizes an array of emotions without a single word spoken.
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Joseph Gorden Levitt and Lynn Collins star in Uncertainty
Being of the same age, of course I’ve had a crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt ever since 3rd Rock from the Sun, even though it came to our part of the world a few years late (by the way, thanks to Dexter, I now know John Lithgow only as Arther Mitchell, aka the Trinity; his sweet image has been irreversibly tarnished).
So Joseph grew up and started doing niche movies that were interesting: Mysterious Skin, Brick (which I loved), The Lookout, etc (crush magnified). He also happened to study French poetry (crush sealed). But then, he developed a knack for doing movies that never go from being “almost good” to good. In fact, the only thing good about 500 Days of Summer is that he plays the main guy; everything else about that movie is a big blah (actually I have a whole thing to say on that topic, but I’ll save that for later); and even though he had a very small role in it, Miracle at St. Anna was possibly the biggest disappointment. It’s the most unique movie experience ever because it can be one of the best or the shittiest movies you saw, depending on which scene you’re talking about. Until now, I didn’t even know that he was in that GI Joe movie. To come to the point, I’ve taken it upon myself to loosely monitor his career within my capacity (watching GI Joe falls outside that capacity), which naturally means I’ll go see Uncertainty this Friday at the IFC Center, where he and the crew will be present for Q&A. However, I’m more curious about his short Sparks:
UNCERTAINTY stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lynn Collins, and Olivia Thirlby and directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel will appear in person Friday, November 13 at the 7:25 and 9:45pm shows. Gordon-Levitt, McGehee, and Siegel will also appear Saturday at the 7:25 and 9:45pm shows, and McGehee and Siegel will appear Sunday at the 7:25pm show, which will screen with Gordon-Levitt’s short Sparks.
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Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out is the newish Rolling Stones documentary, and IFC is screening it tonight at 8:45pm with the filmmaker Albert Maysles in person. It’s only 27 minutes long, so they’ve paired it with Sympathy for the Devil, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1968 film on the band, which will follow.
Albert Maysles has put together never-before seen archive footage that shows the band — Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Mick Taylor and Bill Wyman — at its apogee, wowing New York audiences at Madison Square Garden over the Thanksgiving weekend of that year [1969].
I finally got around to watching Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and it was terribly disappointing. If you strip it of all its superfluous “indie” details, like Crash Mansion, Bowery Ballroom and Union Pool (or, “Brooklyn Pool”), it’s just another teenage movie template bloated with convenient circumstances. The new girl is entirely likable, even to the gay band, and is in love with music; whereas the ex-girlfriend is annoying, unfaithful, and can’t even get the band name “Where Is Fluffy” right; in the meantime, the new girl’s ex-boyfriend is full of himself and a douche as well, so of course our music-loving, heart-broken protagonist should get on with this new girl! This setup is in remarkable contrast to Juno, where all the characters are wholesome because they’re flawed yet able to stir empathy, and the events that unfold are neither extreme and bizarre like what happens in Hard Candy, nor as easy as picking a cool girl over a tiny slut.
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I saw filmmaker Craig Zobel’s The Great World of Sound a while ago, but got it on Netflix again to re-watch a scene in which a character performs Joanna Newsom’s “Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie” a cappella. Outside the context of the movie, the singing by actress Tricia Paoluccio is a little too theatrical even for Joanna Newsom material, but it gives me goosebumps nevertheless, and worthily illustrates Joanna Newsom’s gift as a songwriter. The story of how this song ended up in the movie is discussed in an interview on Fabulist. When I first watched the film, the surprise was so unexpected that it almost made me leap; so I’m sorry about the spoiler, though it has been over a year since it came out! It’s not by any means a movie that will move you a million miles, but it’s kind of a sweet story with a sad aftertaste, and modest in its telling, about a disheartened music enthusiast who finds himself working for a record company that scams aspiring musicians in small towns; Kene Holliday, who plays a colleague bent on making his job work, is actually pretty hilarious; and though Tricia Paoluccio was a hired actress, most musicians you see in the movie are non-actors who thought they were auditioning for real–their responses to the staged auditions are far more telling about the entertainment industry than the plot itself. Continue to download the song and watch the trailer.
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